


Inconveniently Busy

by OldTsuki



Series: Inconveniently [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Summer Vacation, fluff and smut with a bit of plot, fox forest, of course betty would do her summer homework, serpent study group, southside serpents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-20 13:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14895815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldTsuki/pseuds/OldTsuki
Summary: Betty shows up at Jughead's campsite with a backpack full of books and plans to get their summer homework done. Once their study session is officially underway, they find themselves slowly joined by more and more teen Serpents.Part 4 of the Southside Showcase challenge, and my series "Inconveniently"! Written for Day 4: Fox Forest.





	Inconveniently Busy

Life at the Serpent camp along Sweetwater River was comfortingly dull. As the summer got into full swing, it seemed like everyone settled into the lazy habits of camping. Though many of the Serpents were homeless after the Ghoulies had ransacked Sunnyside Trailer Park, everyone was making due and supporting one another as best they could. At least Fred Andrews was still allowing people to use his washer and dryer, and a few other members of the community were occasionally leaving bags or boxes of supplies near their parked cars and bikes to keep them afloat. The adult Serpents were searching for jobs, picking up handiwork around town, and otherwise gathering their finances to secure more permanent lodging before the summer began to fade into the less palatable temperatures of fall.

Still, it was only late June, so they had plenty more time to enjoy their extended camp out. Jughead in particular was enjoying the unexpected moments when he’d be relaxing on his air mattress and the tell-tale sound of his zipper would herald a certain Betty Cooper’s entrance into his little tent. With her mother still spiraling, she was immensely grateful to have somewhere to hide from her life on the Northside that was so essentially off the grid.

That morning, he was looking at the patterns that shadowed leaves and sunlight were casting on the vinyl of his tent, running over a few issues in his mind. Some of the older Serpents wanted to contact a few friends in Greendale and start supplying pot to a few willing customers in Riverdale, and Jughead was endlessly reminding them that the Serpents were not going to give the RPD such a petty reason to start making arrests. He’d been urging everyone to keep their heads down. Until Hiram Lodge played his next hand, they were going to keep watching for signs of their next battle while they reinforced their weaknesses and healed their wounds.

Not to mention that his dad had taken off for Toledo almost a week and a half ago, leaving Jughead to handle everyone on his own. Without even a call, Jughead had no way of knowing if his dad had made it to his grandparents’ house, or if he’d crashed his bike somewhere along the way and was rotting in a ditch. It was typical, but it still left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He checked his cell phone at the thought, but its blank screen told him nothing but the time.

The rip of a zipper jolted him out of his thoughts, making him prop himself up on one elbow and watch as Betty’s ponytail flashed into view. “Jug? Are you awake?” she asked softly, evidently not wanting to disturb him if he wasn’t.

“Yeah, come inside,” he said, relaxing again.

Betty kicked her shoes off outside the tent and slipped inside, zipping it up behind herself. Strangely, she had her backpack slung over one shoulder. Jughead raised his eyebrows at the sight, wondering what she’d brought along.

“Running away from home, Betty?” he asked, thinking that maybe she’d filled it with clothes and supplies.

She laughed shortly, then shook her head. “No, Jug. Eventually all of you are going to get back to normal life, and that means _school_. We’re going to do our summer reading today.”

He hadn’t even thought about school since June, it seemed. Jughead had so many other things to worry about, reading a novel for a far-off assignment seemed like the least of his priorities. But looking at Betty’s serious expression, he could see that school still held plenty of value to her. He felt a pang of anxiety--of course school held value to Betty Cooper, class valedictorian, student hospitality chairwoman, keynote speaker of Riverdale’s Jubilee celebration. She was destined to leave this town, to go to college, to make her life extraordinary. All of those things were meant to be for her--had _always_ been meant to be--but not for him. Not for the first time, he felt exquisitely guilty about involving her with the Serpents and endangering the viability of that charmed life he knew she was supposed to have.

She set down her backpack and leaned over, balancing her weight on his air mattress so that they didn’t fall over. Jughead held out one arm and moved obligingly. When she was comfortably tucked against his side, he pressed his lips against the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her fresh shampoo, thinking about how he’d never loved the scent of watermelon as much as he did now that he got to be so close to her on a regular basis.

Betty turned her chin up to meet his lips with hers. He languidly ran a few fingers over the exposed skin of her hip, just beneath the hem of the t-shirt that had ridden up when she’d crawled into his bed. He was rewarded with a Betty shiver, and a tiny moan that he felt with his mouth more than he actually heard.

Maneuvering carefully, since the air mattress was a treacherous surface in more than one way, he shifted until he was partially covering her body with his. One of his knees had to rest between Betty’s legs for the sake of his balance. He reached up and brushed a lock of hair away from her face, smiling lightly to reciprocate the happy expression she was dreamily directing at him. She reached for him, cupping his face in her hands as she pressed her petal-pink lips against his, letting him feel their velvet softness. Sometimes he thought that the way he felt about her was something more than humans had invented words to describe. The only means he had of communicating that feeling was by showing her, by slightly tilting his head so that he could push his tongue against hers, run it over her slightly swollen bottom lip. He drew that lip gently between his teeth, sucked on it, and opened his eyes to see the way her cheeks had flushed and her lips turned up with pleasure, understanding what he was saying without the words. Driven by a more ancestral instinct than he’d care to admit, he began slowly planting kisses along her jaw and neck in a pathway that was intended to communicate his intentions with absolute clarity. Betty’s body arched against his as his lips found her pulse point, her hips riding up against his thigh with a need born from a primal ferocity. She ran her hands through his hair, tugging just enough to be painfully pleasant. Jughead couldn’t resist nipping her with his teeth in response.

She untangled her fingers to pull her own shirt over her head, biting her lip in the way that drove all rational thoughts from his mind as she did so. Jughead’s mouth returned to her skin with an increased need after the momentary break that the shirt had caused. He kissed his way along her collar bone, slipping one hand up her side until he found the silky material of her bra. Betty raised her shoulder from the air mattress, giving him enough clearance to pinch the hooks apart. With a glance at her flushed face and closed eyes, Jughead began kissing his way up the mound of her breast, slipping her bra away from her body with the hand that wasn’t supporting his weight.

Betty bucked against him again as his mouth found her pert peak, muttering a half-coherent, “Juggie,” as he slid his fingers over her flesh and gave an insistent squeeze. Her hands were fumbling at the hem of his t-shirt now, and he cooperatively paused his worship to help her pull it off and toss it into the corner of the tent. Betty’s hands splayed over his abdomen and chest immediately, running over his shoulders and urging him onward. She threw back her head and rolled her hips again, and this time he pushed his knee down into the mattress to give her more of the friction she was looking for. The reward was a rare half-breathed, “Fuck, Jug.”

He couldn’t stop a crooked smile from spreading over his face. “At your command,” he teased, hooking a few fingers into the waist of her shorts with her panties and pulling them downward. Betty raised her hips again, slipping one leg out of the fabric and then kicking her clothes away with the other.

Jughead gave himself a moment to appreciate the sight of his very naked, very beautiful girlfriend spread out on his sleeping bag. Her cheeks were colored a pretty pink, not because of any makeup she might have put on before coming across town. Those magnificent green eyes met his gaze with a lusty haze, looking quickly downward toward his boxers. Betty’s lips turned up in a devious smile before she slid her fingers along the skin at the edge of his waistband, almost light enough to tickle. It was Jughead’s turn to thrust forward against her, unconsciously trying to redirect her hand to a more relieving location.

Betty slipped her hand below the elastic, tentatively closing her fingers around the base of his length and gently starting to stroke. Jughead groaned and thrust into her hand in an attempt to get more relief, his eyes closing at the unadulterated bliss of the sensation. When she released him, he couldn’t help the slight whimper that rose up at the back of his throat.

She laughed a bit and said, “I need you,” drawing his boxers downward and moving so that his hips were aligned over hers. For the sake of balance, Jughead had to keep both hands braced on either side of her. It was worse than being stuck in handcuffs. Betty’s fingers were still teasing him, pulling his tip against her core and rubbing him slightly in the wet heat that waited there.

He was panting, his heart threatening to burst out of his body. Looking down at her, he said, “I should get a condom.”

Betty’s eyes met his, huge and dark with need. She didn’t have to say that she didn’t want to stop. He couldn't imagine getting any closer to heaven than pressing onward into territory neither of them had ever risked, before. But he’d never risk derailing her life any more than he already had, and so he exercised all of his self-restraint to lean over and tug a foil square out of his open duffel bag.

He rolled the latex smoothly over himself, returning impatiently to his previous position. Betty’s expression was one part resigned and three parts grateful. No need to risk invoking any other Cooper family curses.

Just as he was sliding into her, thinking that her warm pressure already felt so good that he needed to be careful not to finish too quickly-- All hell broke loose around them. A cacophony of noise filled the tent. Betty and Jughead tensed, freezing where they were, as both attempted to figure out what on earth was going on. The walls were being rudely hit, pinched in fistfuls in some places to allow for more shaking.

“WAKE UP, FORSYTHE!” howled a familiar voice, somewhere around the back of the tent.

Jughead was going to murder each of them, slowly, by skinning them with a rusty switchblade in one-inch squares, piece by piece. “Shit,” he muttered, looking down at Betty. She bit her lip, cocked one eyebrow inquisitively, and rolled her hips upward, smirking at the expression of shock he directed toward her. Then she did it again, and he recovered enough of his wits to glare. At least three, maybe four, Serpents must have been standing around his tent and sharply rustling the fabric to provide his ‘wake up call’.

“Be out in a minute,” Betty called sweetly, looking upward toward the voice.

One of the people outside made a noise that sounded like a middle-school ‘oooooh,’ which faded in volume and let them both know that their assailants were retreating. Still smirking deviously, Betty brought her hips up to meet his again.

“Betty,” he hissed, looking automatically over at the door she’d zippered shut. Of course, no one was there, but he was still worried that they were about to be caught.

Betty ran her hand over the side of his face and shushed him. “Quiet, Jug,” she whispered.

Something about the situation drove him to thrust a little more quickly than usual. Maybe it was knowing that they needed to be absolutely quiet, maybe it was the threat of being discovered. Whatever it was, Betty’s fingers were digging into his back and he was doing his damnedest not to let the sound of their skin meeting slap audibly and give them away. Feeling her body stiffen beneath his and her core tighten erratically around him drove Jughead over the edge, and he finished with Betty. Letting his head drop against her shoulder, for a moment they held each other and struggled to catch their breath.

When he raised his head, Betty was grinning contentedly at him. “Alright, Jug, let’s get back to business,” she said, pushing him aside and starting to find her clothes. On any other day, she'd curl against him and cuddle contentedly for a long while after that sort of sex. Jughead raised his eyebrows and watched her, surprised.

“Business?” he repeated. “I thought that’s what we just did.”

Betty snorted, pulling her shorts up over her hips. “No, I came here to study, Jughead. And you’re going to study with me.”

He found a semi-clean sock and cleaned himself up, leaving the condom inside to be dealt with later, rooting around to find other semi-clean clothes in his bag. It was looking like he’d need to make a laundry run over to Archie’s soon.

To appease their friends, they checked one another’s appearance in an effort to make sure that what they’d been doing wasn’t too obvious, and they left the tent. Betty was carrying two books she took from her backpack, two pens, and a bottle of water. Once Jughead zipped his tent closed, he looked around to see who had nearly interrupted them.

Several Serpents were milling around their campsite, some still blinking in the morning light, others conversing quietly. Jughead saw a flash of dark hair across the clearing, and immediately suspected that Sweet Pea had been among those who decided to wake him.

Without anyone immediately approaching them, Betty led Jughead into Fox Forest a short distance, down one of the many trails leading away from their campsite. They stopped at a small clearing with a wooden picnic table, one of Dilton Doiley’s scout projects. There, she resolutely handed him a book. Jughead smiled at his girlfriend as he took the volume and sat down, flipping past the first few pages.

“This is fairly short,” he commented, finding the first page. “ _The Turn of the Screw_ ,” he read out loud, glancing up. “What’s the topic for the essay?”

Betty shook her head. “We’re just supposed to annotate while we read,” she replied.

They settled into a comfortable silence, occasionally punctuated only by one or the other commenting on what they were reading. For the most part, Jughead and Betty read at a similar pace. When he reached the scene with Miles and Flora at the lake, and the governess was hallucinating wildly, he’d forgotten that he was reading a book at all. The pages faded, the words became images in his mind, and he was simply breezing through the text. The governess was clearly insane, growing more and more hysterical by the moment. Just as Jughead felt like she was about to discover some important information about her predecessor, Betty jarred him from his reading with a nudge of her foot.

“Jug,” she said. “You’re not making any notes. They’re going to think you didn’t read it.”

He sighed, flipping back and finding a few important passages to underline. “I can do this when I’m done, Betty,” he commented. “I have to find out what’s wrong with this kid.”

As the words left his mouth, they both heard a snap nearby. Looking over, they saw Toni sheepishly smiling at them.

“Hey,” she said, raising one hand in greeting. Finishing her progress toward their picnic table, she raised a small dog-eared book in her other hand. “Fangs saw you leave with books, and I was hoping you could tell me what the hell happened with this ending.”

Betty gave her an apologetic look. “We’re reading it for the first time, actually,” she admitted. “But in a few hours, maybe? Did you annotate it?”

Toni shook her head. “I hate doing that,” she said. “Writing in books feels wrong.”

Jughead sympathized. “Might as well go back and do it now,” he suggested, gesturing to the table. She took a seat, flipping open her book and borrowing his pen to begin making notes.

He went back to reading, allowing himself to be drawn in once again. Just as he was about to discover what happened when the governess left her room in the middle of the night, another figure approached from the direction of the campsite.

Fangs was carrying his book, too, and reluctantly dropped it onto the table when he was near enough. “I hate this,” he commented, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I can’t find the movie anywhere.”

Jughead quipped, “That might have been why they assigned it.”

With their number swollen from three to four, they resumed their studying. Once Jughead finished the novel, he looked over at Toni’s copy and pointed to a few things she’d underlined near the ending. Quietly, as to keep from ruining the book for Betty, he did his best to communicate his thoughts in answer to her earlier question.

Sweet Pea emerged from the pathway a few minutes later, without a book in his hand. He took in the scene before him, quietly regarding the four Serpents who stared back at him. With a look of irritation, he said, “Lead the Serpents for two fucking weeks, Jughead, and you’ve started a study group. Un-fucking believable.”

Betty patted the space on the picnic bench next to her and smiled sweetly. “Come here, Sweet Pea, we’re just about to discuss the ending.”  
He looked ready to turn and run, but something flickered across his expression and instead he took the seat that Betty offered. Looking over at her book, he said, “Miles was possessed, right? And messing with her?”

Betty smiled and began flipping back to find a quote in response to Sweet Pea's statement. As they continued their discussion, they came to the conclusion that the narrator couldn’t be completely trusted. The debate was focusing on whether any of the other characters could see the ghosts that she described. Just as Betty was pointing out that Miles seemed to be able to see them, another figure came out of the trees.

Wearing a bright red hunting cape and knee-high riding boots, Cheryl was looking like she’d woken that morning intending to go for a walk through the woods. She let her eyes linger on the books at the center of the table for a long moment. Jughead almost thought that she was going to make some sort of scathing remark about their quaint study habits, but when she met Toni’s gaze, something in her face softened.

“The governess was hysterical,” she said, surprising everyone. “It’s clear from the very beginning.”

They continued discussing the book quietly at the picnic table for a few hours. Sweet Pea even left to fetch his copy out of his tent and return with it, underlining studiously while they argued about the credibility of the governess. Jughead was grateful that Betty had decided they would get this done today, since he'd honestly had so many other things to worry about he'd completely forgotten the book they needed to read for American Literature in the fall. He looked over at her with an appreciative smile, feeling a thrill shiver along his spine as she glanced up and licked her lips. How was it that Betty could be so incredibly beautiful and endlessly exciting? Jughead was just grateful that she saw whatever she saw in him.

Betty unzipped her backpack as the sun climbed to its apex in the sky, setting out several cans of soda and a few zip-lock backs of sandwiches on the table. Cheryl rolled her eyes, but still took her portion of the picnic.

"Betty Crocker strikes again," she said, but not maliciously.

With a pleased grin, Betty opened her own sandwich and took a bite. Everyone was muttering their thanks when a familiar snapping echoed from the direction of the campsite, heralding another visitor.

Jughead glanced over and saw his dad warily approaching, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. He raised his eyebrows and felt himself straighten, even as his dad's face broke into a faint smile.

"Hey there, boy," he said, clapping his hand on Jughead's shoulder. He looked around at the others.

"Hi, Mr. Jones," Betty greeted, smiling. She reached into her backpack and produced another sandwich. "Want to have some lunch with us?"

Toni raised her eyebrows and leaned over to look into the backpack. "How many sandwiches did you make, Betty?" she asked curiously.

Betty shrugged. "It was a whole loaf of bread," she commented innocently, looking over at Jughead. "I wasn't sure how many sandwiches we would want, or how many people we'd share with."

She was thinly implying that Jughead could have eaten them all on his own, which wasn't a stretch. FP took a sandwich and sat down nearby them, looking over curiously at Jughead's book.

"What are all of you doing?" he asked, frowning at the writing on the pages.

Jughead didn't say anything. His dad had been gone since school let out, after announcing that Jughead would be taking over his leadership of the Serpents. Supposedly, he'd gone to make up with mom, but neither of them had contacted Jughead once in the subsequent weeks. Truth be told, he was fairly angry with his dad. He'd given up a lot and dealt with more to make sure that he was there when his dad needed someone, as he was growing up. This time, like many others, it felt like his dad wasn't there for him again.

FP looked around the table. Finally, Toni said, "Homework." The others must have picked up immediately on Jughead's prolonged silence. When he looked over at Betty, he could see the expression of concern that she was badly trying to hide.

Suddenly, his dad laughed loudly. The teens all turned to look at him, since it seemed to bubble up so randomly. Throwing an arm around Jughead's shoulders, he said, "I knew you'd do right by everyone, boy."

Jughead felt an immediate spike of irritation, probably because his dad was assuming (like Sweet Pea) that this had been his idea. Rolling his shoulder to toss his dad's arm away, he said, "Actually, Betty made this happen."

FP looked over at Betty and burst out in a fresh peal of laughter. "Of course she did," he said, grinning.

He rose from the table, still holding a half-eaten sandwich. Jughead looked up at him incredulously, unable to stop himself from scowling. Like usual, his dad thought that he could just slip in and out of his son's life at will, picking up right where they'd left off without so much as an apology. He wanted to ask how Toledo was, how mom was, if Jellybean remembered him--but that was a conversation he would _never_ have in front of his friends, no matter how badly he wanted to know. Jughead was used to disappointment where his family life was concerned, after all.

He would have said something, but Betty reached across the table and covered his hand in hers, squeezing gently. The pressure jolted Jughead out of the wash of his emotion, and he glanced over at her with a grateful look. 

Instead of snapping at his dad, or interrogating him, he said, "Are you going to be around for a few days?" Never mind the rock that formed in his throat as he said it, or the way he felt his lungs constricting. Just like every time it happened, he felt like he was twelve years old again, like he wanted to say _You have to stay, because someone is supposed to care about_ me _as much as I care about you._

FP smiled easily, meeting his eyes. His expression conveyed that nothing was wrong, but Jughead knew his dad well enough to recognize that front when he saw it. Just as nonchalantly, he said, "Of course, Jug."

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so if you haven't read "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James I strongly recommend it. It's a very quick read, definitely something that Betty and Jughead could do in a day if they were focused. It's a gothic ghost story with a side of insane narrator, quite interesting. :)
> 
> Thank you again for reading, this has been such a fun week!


End file.
